


Enough For Both

by Saentorine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Adoption, Baby Thor, Brothers, Canon Backstory, Family, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Fluff, Gen, Married Couple, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Nursing, POV Female Character, Parent Frigga, Parenthood, baby Loki, milk brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saentorine/pseuds/Saentorine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frigga-centric fluff: Odin returns to Asgard to present Frigga with the newly-found Loki. Frigga asks all the questions Odin probably should have asked himself, but has even less trouble than he does accepting their second son.</p>
<p>Set staunchly in the universe of the MCU films, in which Frigga is Thor's biological mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough For Both

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T because some people are weird about breasts and nursing. There's a lot of lore in various cultures about the bond between children who nurse from the same woman, and so I liked the idea that despite not sharing blood the two brothers do have that bond, especially since they're both close to Frigga in their own way. (Besides, initially Thor doesn't seem to be aware of Loki's origins, either, which implies to me that he would have been young enough not to remember when Loki was adopted).
> 
> This was originally going to be a longer piece about Frigga's perspective on everything, but I think that's too ambitious for me right now so (at least for now) I'm just posting what would have been the first chapter.

Although she had been spending most of her time in the presence of Odin’s remaining council during his absence, Frigga was nursing Thor in her private chambers when she received news of her husband’s return. Barely out of infancy, her only son already had a fine crop of ruddy-gold curls and fat, strong limbs. In fact, he was so large on his last visit home Odin had jested that they ought to give him his own goblet of mead, but Frigga would insist on nursing him until he no longer cared to do so.

When Odin entered the family chambers, flanked by his highest attendant Einherjar still in their armor, both of them broke into smiles far less solemn than they would have had they met in the company of the court. She stood from her chair holding Thor in her arms, feeling a little foolish struggling to lift a small child but also proud to flaunt just how much he had grown. With the Nine Realms at war Thor had barely gotten to see his father, but he still recognized him. He broke into a huge smile as Odin lifted him to growl playfully and nuzzle his beard into his belly. Thor shrieked in delight at the affectionate tickling.

Odin then set Thor on the floor down amongst the carved wooden boat and soldiers he was just beginning to manipulate in rudimentary play. He grasped the long body of one of the soldiers and began smacking it in firm rhythm against the floor, and Odin smiled at his strength and vigor before approaching his wife to twine his fingers in her hair and pull her close to him in a long-awaited kiss.

When they were nearly out of breath Odin cautiously beckoned back to one of his attendants at the door. Frigga was startled to notice what she had not before, that this one delicately carried a small bundle of blankets dwarfed by his immense arms. It took only a moment for Frigga to recognize what it was, and her heart sank with a dull thud.

A baby. 

The campaign against the Jötuns had dragged on for several years-- plenty long enough, she knew, for Odin to have taken a mistress and seen the birth of their child. Never mind that he had been back to Asgard several times in the meantime-- most notably to father Thor, and then upon his birth present him to court—and all along never would have mentioned it. Frigga’s blood began to boil with rage and shame, knowing that all their happy reunions had been tainted by this betrayal. No sooner had she provided him an heir than he had sought the company of another? Her heart fluttered frantically within her chest but she fought to keep her emotions suppressed, not wanting her husband’s men to see her humiliation.

But Odin was not her husband for nothing, and he took immediate note of the rising flush in her cheeks. "Frigga,” his voice cut firmly through the pulse thudding thunderously in her ears. “The child is not mine. I found him abandoned at the surrender.”

"You found him," Frigga repeated hollowly in disbelief.

"Yes," Odin met her eyes, trying to impress upon her his honesty. "The child is of Jötunheim.”

He nodded to the Einherjar to pass the bundle to Frigga so she could inspect it. She suspected she was being manipulated-- Odin knew she had a gentle heart and could not be angry at an innocent child, and perhaps thought this might spare him her rage by extension-- but she was nonetheless curious. She gingerly collected the child into her arms and pushed back the blankets to reveal his face. He had been sleeping in the man’s arms but stirred at the exchange, large green eyes opening and squinting at her peevishly as he began to make fretful noises in the back of his throat, a warning of cries to come. Instinctively Frigga shushed him gently as she would Thor, rocking him in her arms to soothe him back to sleep. Although Thor had more than doubled in size, the baby felt just as he had as a newborn, the same size and weight of an Asgardian infant. In fact, with his pale, unmarked skin he didn't look Jötun at all.

"This child is a Jötun?" Frigga asked. “Why isn’t he . . . ?”

"Blue?" Odin finished for her, smiling slightly. "He was. But no sooner did I touch him he changed-- and by no power of mine, I swear to you. He appears to have substantial magical ability. I suppose my touch was what prompted it, but he's maintained this guise ever since."

Despite all her shock and suspicion, Frigga's heart melted as she imagined Odin's surprise at this enemy child conforming to the form of the first living touch he might have felt in hours, even days. She had to admit it was a charming mechanism of self-defense. In the midst of a brutal war, perhaps this small act had saved his life.

"Why did you take him?” Frigga pressed. Though compelling, Odin's explanation of his transformation was awfully convenient, and the child's Asgardian appearance could be just as easily explained by mixed genetics. And as a conqueror, what obligation did Odin have to the life of this tiny, foreign child?

"Frigga, this boy is not just any Jötun child, but the son of King Laufey himself. I found him while searching for survivors after their surrender, in the temple on the palace grounds. He had been deposited there at some point during the final hours; he was fretful and quite soiled by then, but neither starving nor frozen."

Frigga was not surprised; if the child was Jötun of course he wasn't frozen, for to a frost giant the harsh winds and snows of Jötunheim would feel no less pleasant than a breezy spring day in Asgard. She had a sinking feeling of dread that Odin may have mistaken their intent. What if he had been placed in the temple for safekeeping, in an appeal for protection not only by the large stone walls, but perhaps from some power higher than even the Asgardians themselves? Such superstitions were not unheard of even amongst Asgardians; not wholly immortal, many of them believed that beyond fate, there was still yet a more powerful conscious force guiding the universe, not merely ruling it.

"What if someone returned for him?" Frigga questioned frantically. "If he was to be their king . . . ?"

"The child has obvious gifts," Odin replied, "but he is unusually small for a Jötun." When Frigga only blinked in response, not understanding why this mattered, Odin continued. "You forget that not all people are as civilized as in Asgard. We value intelligence, magic, wit, and diplomacy alongside strength and military prowess, and those who are gifted in them find purpose here as statesmen and scientists. But the Jötun are foremost warriors, with little use for anything other than raw mass and physical power. He never would have been able to fulfill his born role as their leader. They intended the child to die. They saw it as mercy, for him as well as their people.”

"They would kill an infant prince for no greater crime than his size?" Frigga tried to imagine the kind of mother that would consent to her child's death for the sake of a stronger realm-- but if the Jötun were as base and uncivilized as Odin said, she knew it was unlikely his mother had had a say in this. Even in Asgard there were limits to her power over her own children's lives, if Odin were ever to command otherwise. Her heart tugged in pity for the strange foreign woman in another world, as well as the fragile babe, both helpless in the face of war and their brutal warrior customs.

Odin did not reply, for it showed clearly on Frigga's face that she understood.

“But why did _you_ take him?” Frigga asked again. Captives and hostages were one thing, but Odin had brought the boy specifically to their imperial chambers, to Frigga herself.

"He was born a prince, however small, and I would have him brought up as one," Odin replied evenly. "His father was my enemy, but nonetheless a great king and warrior. I will honor him by this."

"Honor him by taking the child he wished dead?" Frigga retorted-- but gently, because she did not mean to imply the child _should_ be dead, not now that he was sleeping contentedly in her arms. Besides, she could already read the answer in his lies, which confirmed his fidelity. 

She now understood this adoption was no random act of mercy and warrior honor, but deliberate political strategy. While searching for survivors, as he claimed, she knew he was also pillaging and taking captives. It was no secret to her that Asgard's ongoing military engagements were a primary source of treasures, servants, and mercenaries to Asgard, exotic relics to glorify the golden city and subdue the conquered realms. It was Odin's good fortune to have found something of particular value this time, and in the end whether the child had been intended to die or not was none of his concern. Perhaps the child had not even been abandoned at all, but plucked directly from his bed, and Odin had only told her as much to soothe her concern for the child's bereaved parents and seed the pity that would consent her to take him as a son. At the right time, Odin would reveal his acquisition to his enemies to end the ongoing tension for good.

She opened her mouth to protest saddling an innocent with such an obligation, the responsibility of uniting two long-feuding realms, but then stopped. The threads of the child’s fate had already been woven this far, and there was nothing she could do to change it now. She had to trust the wisdom in Odin’s decision, whatever mystic knowledge or suspicions he had gained from Mimir’s Well, and guide the child as best she could from here. Already she had to agree that the child was surely safer with them in Asgard than it would have been in Jötunheim. The reasons Odin had taken him in the first place made no difference if she could bring him up in strength and health as her own son.

“Have you thought of what his life would be like?” she asked her husband, “growing up as a captured ward of your enemy, an outsider? Have you thought of how others will treat him, after this great war in which we have lost the fathers, brothers, and sons of many of our citizens?”

“Asgard will not know,” Odin replied. “My men are the only ones who have seen him, and they are sworn to their secrecy on pain of death. Our realm will accept him as they accept Thor, as my own son and their rightful prince. And he will believe nothing less of himself until the time comes for him to understand the role to which he has been fated.”

Frigga frowned. “You intend to lie to him about it as well? Odin, there should be no secrets in the family . . . “

"How would you explain such things to a child? War, abandonment, attempted infanticide? Only a grown man, a warrior, would be able to appreciate the context in which this choice was made."

"There are ways of explaining such things to children in simple terms they can understand, until the time comes for them to know the full truth."

"You would sooner tempt him with small, unsatisfying hints of his origins? No, he is more protected in his innocence until he is proven capable of full comprehension. A little knowledge is a much more dangerous thing. And look-- the child already prefers to imagine himself as one of us," he nodded, indicating how the child maintained his Asgardian guise even as he slept, as if it were his own natural skin.

Frigga pursed her lips as she stared down at the boy, worrying that this decision would haunt them. After a moment she raised her eyes again. “If this is to be kept secret from all, you truly have not thought this through,” she explained. “The child is small, but not so small my pregnancy would have gone unnoticed. If you mean for him to be known as my son, there are some things to be considered.”

Odin closed his eye and almost chuckled, recognizing that of course she was right. “I am sure you could use some time to yourself, away from the eyes of court, to recover after seeing to Asgard’s affairs while I was in battle,” he agreed. “In a few months, we will reveal him as our newborn. But if I am to Sleep, will it not be too much for you?”

“If I could mind the whole of Asgard while you were gone, I can certainly mind two sons.”

“I daresay yours will be the greater challenge.” Odin nodded towards Thor, who had slammed his wooden soldier so forcefully against the floor that its head had dented, and he laughed in gratification.

She held her smile, but in truth her confidence was not so great. It was a familiar panic, though, the same gnawing sense of terror at such vast responsibility the first time she had held Thor. At least with Thor she had been prepared, having had the full term of pregnancy to ready herself for his arrival. There were a few things that were obvious, though. The baby had woken again and, feeling the baby’s sharp fingers pressing insistently against the softness of her breast, she started to slide the strap of her gown from her shoulder in order to give him access.

Odin scoffed. “Do not concern yourself with his feeding; we will find him a nurse.”

“If he is to be our son, he is to be our son,” Frigga insisted. Odin dropped his head in assent with a small smile, her steely gaze being one of the few forces in the Nine Realms that could bend his will. “I will attend to these duties now; is it not high time you returned to yours?” She nodded towards the attendant who held Gungnir for him. She knew he had come to his family first, but Asgard needed to know its king had returned home before the exhaustion of battle caught up with him and he lied down for his Sleep.

When Odin and his attendants had departed, Frigga knelt and adjusted the baby to hold out to Thor. “This is your new little brother,” she told him. “Loki.”

Thor’s blue eyes scrutinized Loki’s green with amiable curiosity. However, before he could reach for them, she withdrew, grateful Thor was too young to remember this unusual introduction to his now-brother. Then she settled herself back against the cushions of her favorite chair, wide and strong enough for herself and growing Thor, and pulled away her bodice so that Loki could nurse.

She feared the exhausted child would be too weak to eat or reject her unfamiliar milk, but breathed a gentle sigh of relief when he not only latched, but drank greedily. It was clear he had not been fed for a long time. The poor thing was wasting away, but the strength of Jötunheim was not absent from his blood; he was a resilient creature who would soon grow healthy under her ministrations in the comfort of the palace.

However, after a minute or so, Thor suddenly began to wail, lifting his arms towards Frigga as he often did to signal he was hungry. Frigga wondered if he was _truly_ hungry or if he had detected a rival for her milk. "Little one, you just ate!" she scolded gently, but as Thor had been feeding more often lately to keep up with his fast growth, she couldn’t deny him. Loki responded with a shrill cry as she shifted him from her breast in order to stand to collect Thor, and as she struggled to keep safe hold of Loki while lifting her heavy older son the chamber echoed with the impatient screams of two hungry princes. However, soon enough with the aid of some pillows she had positioned herself and both boys so that they could nurse simultaneously, and everything was miraculously, contentedly quiet.

"There now, no reason to fret. There's enough for both of you," she assured them, holding them close to her. It was true, and it would always be true-- for her and her love. But despite how often she would wish this for Odin’s approval, for the glory of the throne of Asgard, it could never be.


End file.
